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1994 Fools: Proposal for newsgroup hierarchy changes to lower SNR
From andrew@zone4.ocunix.on.ca Tue Apr 5 02:24:23 EDT 1994 Article: 76104 of news.groups Path: bigblue.oit.unc.edu!concert!news.duke.edu!MathWorks.Com!news.kei.com!hookup!torn!nott!cunews!revcan!aficom!zone4!zone4!not-for-mail From: andrew@zone4.ocunix.on.ca (A. Loof) Newsgroups: news.future,news.groups,only-fools-post-here.news.future Subject: Proposal for newsgroup hierarchy changes to lower SNR Date: 1 Apr 1994 18:12:18 -0500 Organization: Zone4 Lines: 89 Distribution: world Message-ID: <2ni9oi$n4e@zone4.ocunix.on.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: zone4.ocunix.on.ca Summary: Ideas for reduction of problems with SNR on Usenet Keywords: RFC1438,RFC1313,RFC1217,RFC0748,Secret Masters of Usenet Xref: bigblue.oit.unc.edu news.future:4055 news.groups:76104 Although the Internet is becoming available to more and more people, the network news community is still closed to many. Naming conventions made years ago, which, while appropriate for programmers, are not appropriate for the general public. In addition, as more new users enter the community, the influence of the more urbane and experienced network news users is being eroded. The influx of new users who do not have time to assimilate the network news culture is increasing the signal-to-noise ratio of newsgroups. These problems must be addressed. Here are some proposed solutions: 1. Rename .d groups The .d suffix, meaning ``discussion,'' is not understood by many new users. This is evident in many groups. As a result, it is proposed that *.d be renamed to the more intuitive *.bitch-and-whine 2. Modification of rec.humor.* rec.humor should be considered by the net community a lost cause. If a joke was posted in it once, the magnetic media on which it was archived has since decayed. Since the people who read rec.humor are obviously unaware of its intent, the following changes are proposed: . rmgroup rec.humor.bitch-and-whine . create a new group rec.no-jokes-at-all-just-depression, which will by its very name serve as a repository for the funniest of the net postings. . create rec.no-jokes-at-all-just-depression.bitch-and-whine for discussion about postings to rec.no-jokes-at-all-just-depression.bitch-and-whine . leave rec.humor as an alias for rec.no-jokes-at-all-just-depression.bitch-and-whine, so as not to surprise current readers of rec.humor. 3. Renaming of news hierarchy It's become obvious that non-technical people think of the ``news'' hierarchy as a place to discuss current events. We propose that a new hierarchy, current-events, be created to parallel the existing news hierarchy. In addition, to support discussion of network news, the existing news hierarchy should be renamed to not-cnn-news-you-moron. 4. Creation of parallel hierarchies as subhierarchies. As more and more new users get access to the net, we will see more and more newbie postings, the sort of which is gradually beginning to overwhelm legitimate traffic in most newsgroups. Thus, we recommend that a new hierarchy be created which will discourage new users from posting, and serve as a base for the Secret Masters of Usenet. In view of the need for moderation of comp.unix.wizards, we recommend that this new hierarchy (which should have all the existing newsgroups below it) be called only-fools-post-here. Although it is unlikely that the name alone will keep newbies away, there is a much greater chance that they will make a typo when entering the name. News software should be configured to redirect postings to only-fook^]]Bls-post-h^]]A^]]B^]]Bere (and other permutations containing cursor key movements) to the appropriate newsgroup outside the only-fools-post-here hierarchy. This could be done in the newsreader, but should also be implemented in NNTP servers to deal with sites which have not upgraded news readers. Complient newsreaders should quietly remove the only-fools-post-here hierarchy from the .newsrc (or equivalent) file for the user who posts to only-fook^]]Bls-post-h^]]A^]]B^]]Bere, and instead substitute the newsgroup in the more global hierarchy. In addition, for the very new user, we recommend creation of a secret-masters-of-usenet hierarchy which parallels the existing hierarchy. This will allow first-year university students a place to masturbate without disturbing the rest of the world. 5. Added support for Freenet users. To support the mentality of the increasing number of Freenet users, we propose the creation of the gee-this-is-a-k00l-bbs hierarchy. Intelligent users could add this to their global kill files, or just configure their NNTP software to reject postings with this in the Newsgroups: line. *** These simple proposals should decrease the amount of noise on all newsgroups, and increase the average intelligence of users. We hope that they will be implemented as soon as possible. A. Loof #
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